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EMILY DICKINSON IN CONTEXT
Long believed to be untouched by contemporary events, ideas, and
environments, Emily Dickinson’s writings have been the subject of
intense historical research in recent years. This volume of thirty-three
essays by leading scholars offers a comprehensive introduction to
the contexts most important for the study of Dickinson’s writings.
While providing an overview of their topic, the essays also present
groundbreaking research and original arguments, treating the poet’s
local environments; literary influences; social, cultural, political, and
intellectual contexts; and reception. A resource for scholars and students of American literature and poetry in English, the collection is
an indispensable contribution to the study not only of Dickinson’s
writings but also of the contexts for poetic production and circulation more generally in the nineteenth-century United States.
Eliza Richards is an associate professor of English and
Comparative Literature at the University of North Carolina at
Chapel Hill. Author of Gender and the Poetics of Reception in Poe’s
Circle (Cambridge, 2004), she has published essays on American
literature and culture in journals such as Arizona Quarterly, ESQ,
Amerikastudien/American Studies, Poe Studies, Yale Journal of Criticism,
and Victorian Poetry.
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E M I LY D I C K I N S O N I N
CONTEXT
Edi ted by
ELIZ A RICHARDS
University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill
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© Cambridge University Press 2013
This publication is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception
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no reproduction of any part may take place without the written
permission of Cambridge University Press.
First published 2013
Printed in the United States of America
A catalog record for this publication is available from the British Library.
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication data
Emily Dickinson in context / [edited by] Eliza Richards, University of
North Carolina, Chapel Hill.
pages cm
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-1-107-02274-4 (hardback)
1. Dickinson, Emily, 1830–1886 – Criticism and interpretation.
I. Richards, Eliza, editor of compilation.
PS1541.Z5E3966 2013
811′.4–dc23
2013009542
ISBN 978-1-107-02274-4 Hardback
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for external or third-party Internet Web sites referred to in this publication and does not
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Contents
List of Illustrations
Contributors
Acknowledgments
List of Abbreviations and Textual Note
Chronology
Introduction
page viii
ix
xv
xvii
xix
1
Eliza Richards
PART i. Local Environments
1 Amherst
13
Domhnall Mitchell
2
Reading in the Dickinson Libraries
25
Eleanor Elson Heginbotham
3
Education
36
Angela Sorby
4
New England Puritan Heritage
46
Jane Donahue Eberwein
5
Nature’s Influence
56
Margaret H. Freeman
PART ii. Literary Contexts: Sources,
Influences, Intertextual Engagements
6 The Bible
69
Emily Seelbinder
v
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vi
Contents
7 Shakespeare
78
Páraic Finnerty
8 Renaissance and Eighteenth-Century Literature
89
David Cody
9 British Romantic and Victorian Influences
98
Elizabeth A. Petrino
10 Transatlantic Women Writers
109
Páraic Finnerty
11 Immediate U.S. Literary Predecessors
119
Cristanne Miller
12 U.S. Literary Contemporaries: Dickinson’s Moderns
129
Mary Loeffelholz
13 Periodical Reading
139
Joan Kirkby
P A R T i i i . S o c i a l , C u lt u r a l , P o l i t i c a l ,
and Intellectual Contexts
14 Religion
151
James McIntosh
15 Death and Immortality
160
Joan Kirkby
16 Gendered Poetics
169
Shira Wolosky
17 Democratic Politics
179
Paul Crumbley
18 Economics
188
Elizabeth Hewitt
19 Law and Legal Discourse
198
James Guthrie
20 Slavery and the Civil War
206
Faith Barrett
21 Popular Culture
216
Sandra Runzo
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Contents
22 Visual Arts: The Pentimento
vii
226
Alexander Nemerov
23 Natural Sciences
236
Sabine Sielke
24 Nineteenth-Century Language Theory and the
Manuscript Variants
246
Melanie Hubbard
25 “Say Some Philosopher!”
257
Jed Deppman
PART iv. Reception
26 Editorial History I: Beginnings to 1955
271
Martha Nell Smith
27 Editorial History II: 1955 to the Present
282
Alexandra Socarides
28 On Materiality (and Virtuality)
292
Gabrielle Dean
29 The Letters Archive
302
Cindy MacKenzie
30 Critical History I: 1890–1955
311
Theo Davis
31 Critical History II: 1955 to the Present
321
Magdalena Zapedowska
32 Dickinson’s Influence
332
Thomas Gardner
33 Translation and International Reception
343
Domhnall Mitchell
Further Reading
Index
Index of Emily Dickinson’s Poems
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369
384
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Illustrations
1. Wild Flowers Drawn and Colored from Nature, ed. Mrs. Badger
(New York: Scribner, 1859; EDR 467) and Morrison’s Stranger’s
Guide to the City of Washington (Washington: Morrison, 1852;
EDR 222)
page 27
2. Emily Dickinson’s cardinal points symbolism (based on
Rebecca Patterson, Imagery, 183–200)
61
3. Winslow Homer, The Veteran in a New Field, 1865. Oil on
canvas, 24 1/8 × 38 1/8 in. Bequest of Miss Adelaide Milton de
Groot (1876–1967), 1967 (67.187.131). The Metropolitan Museum
of Art, New York, New York. Image copyright The Metropolitan
Museum of Art
227
4. The Veteran in a New Field (detail)
228
5. Winslow Homer, Prisoners from the Front, 1866. Oil on canvas,
24 × 38 in. Gift of Mrs. Frank B. Porter, 1922 (22.207). The
Metropolitan Museum of Art
230
6. Winslow Homer, The Brush Harrow, 1865. Oil on canvas,
24 × 37 13/16 in. Harvard Art Museums/Fogg Museum,
Anonymous Gift, 1939.229
231
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Contributors
Faith Barrett is Associate Professor of English at Lawrence University.
She is the author of To Fight Aloud Is Very Brave: American Poetry and
the Civil War (2012) and coeditor with Cristanne Miller of Words for the
Hour: A New Anthology of American Civil War Poetry (2005).
David Cody is Professor of English at Hartwick College. His articles
on Dickinson, Hawthorne, Melville, Poe, Cooper, Whitman, Henry
Adams, Faulkner, and other American and British authors have
appeared in numerous scholarly journals, books, and annual volumes.
Paul Crumbley is Professor of English at Utah State University. He is
the author of Inflections of the Pen: Dash and Voice in Emily Dickinson
(1997) and Winds of Will: Emily Dickinson and the Sovereignty of
Democratic Thought (2010).
Theo Davis is Associate Professor of English at Northeastern University.
She is the author of Formalism, Experience, and the Making of American
Literature in the Nineteenth Century (2007).
Gabrielle Dean is the Curator of Modern Literary Rare Books and
Manuscripts at Johns Hopkins University. She is working on a book
titled Picturing the Grid: Emily Dickinson, Gertrude Stein and the
Photographic Turn.
Jed Deppman is Irvin E. Houck Associate Professor in the Humanities
and Director of Comparative Literature at Oberlin College. A former vice president of the Emily Dickinson International Society, he is
author of Trying to Think with Emily Dickinson (2008) and coeditor of
Emily Dickinson and Philosophy (2013).
Jane Donahue Eberwein is Distinguished Professor of English
(Emerita) at Oakland University. She is the author of Dickinson:
Strategies of Limitation (1985), editor of An Emily Dickinson Encyclopedia
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x
Contributors
(1998), and coeditor with Cindy MacKenzie of Reading Emily Dickinson’s
Letters: Critical Essays (2009).
P á raic Finnerty is a Senior Lecturer in English and American Literature
at the University of Portsmouth. He is the author of Emily Dickinson’s
Shakespeare (2006); he is currently working on his second monograph,
Dickinson and Her British Contemporaries, and a co-authored book,
Victorian Celebrity Culture and Tennyson’s Circle.
Margaret H. Freeman is Emeritus Professor of Los Angeles Valley
College and Co-Director of Myrifield Institute for Cognition and the
Arts. She has published widely on cognitive poetics and the poetry of
Emily Dickinson.
Thomas Gardner is Alumni Distinguished Professor of English at
Virginia Tech. His most recent books are John in the Company of Poets:
The Gospel in Literary Imagination (2011) and A Door Ajar: Contemporary
Writers and Emily Dickinson (2006).
James Guthrie is Professor of English at Wright State University. He
received his doctorate from University at Buffalo / SUNY. He is the
author of Emily Dickinson’s Vision (1998) and Above Time: Emerson’s and
Thoreau’s Temporal Revolutions (2001), as well as several articles concerning Dickinson’s poetry.
Eleanor Elson Heginbotham , Professor of English (Emerita) at
Concordia University St. Paul, is the author of Reading the Fascicles
of Emily Dickinson (2003) and coeditor of a forthcoming collection of
essays on the fascicles, along with some dozen essays in other collections and journals, including EDJ and the ED Bulletin. In “retirement”
she teaches in the Washington, DC, area.
Elizabeth Hewitt is an Associate Professor in the Department of
English at The Ohio State University, Columbus. She is author of
Correspondence and American Literature, 1770–1865 (2004).
Melanie Hubbard is an independent scholar writing a book on
Emily Dickinson’s rhetoric and poetics, for which she won a National
Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) grant; she has published articles in the Emily Dickinson Journal and MOSAIC. Essays are forthcoming in Dickinson and Philosophy (2013) and Spectrum of Possibility, a
collection of essays on Dickinson’s fascicles. She has also published a
book of poems, We Have With Us Your Sky (2012).
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Contributors
xi
Joan Kirkby is the author of Emily Dickinson (1991). Recent publications include “[W]e thought Darwin had thrown ‘the Redeemer’ away:
Darwinizing with Emily Dickinson” (EDJ, 2010) and “‘A crescent still
abides’: Emily Dickinson and the Work of Mourning” (in Wider Than
the Sky: Essays and Meditations on the Healing Power of Emily Dickinson
[2007]).
Mary Loeffelholz is Professor of English and Vice Provost for
Academic Affairs at Northeastern University. She is the author of From
School to Salon: Reading Nineteenth-Century American Women’s Poetry
(2004).
Cindy MacKenzie teaches nineteenth-century American literature at
the University of Regina in Saskatchewan, Canada. She is the author
of A Concordance to the Letters of Emily Dickinson (2000), coeditor of
Reading Dickinson’s Letters: Critical Essays (2010), and coeditor of Wider
Than the Sky: Essays and Meditations on the Healing Power of Emily
Dickinson (2007).
James McIntosh is Professor of English and American Culture
(Emeritus) at the University of Michigan. His most recent book is
Nimble Believing: Dickinson and the Unknown (2000).
Cristanne Miller is SUNY Distinguished Professor and Edward
H. Butler Professor of Literature at the University at Buffalo SUNY.
Author of Emily Dickinson: A Poet’s Grammar (1987) and coeditor of
The Emily Dickinson Handbook (1998), her most recent book is Reading
in Time: Emily Dickinson in the Nineteenth Century (2012). She is currently preparing a new reading edition of Dickinson poems for Harvard
University Press.
Domhnall Mitchell teaches nineteenth-century American literature at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology. He is the
author of Emily Dickinson: Monarch of Perception (2000) and Measures
of Possibility: Emily Dickinson’s Manuscripts (2005). With Maria Stuart,
he edited The International Reception of Emily Dickinson (2009).
His essays have appeared in American Literature, EDJ, Legacy, and
Nineteenth-Century Literature.
Alexander Nemerov is the Carl and Marilynn Thoma Provostial
Professor in the Arts and Humanities at Stanford University. His most
recent book is Wartime Kiss: Visions of the Moment in the 1940s (2012).
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xii
Contributors
Elizabeth A. Petrino is Associate Professor and Chair of English
at Fairfield University. She is the author of Emily Dickinson and Her
Contemporaries: Women’s Verse in America, 1820–1885 (1998). She has
published articles on Dickinson and her female literary peers in several
journals and anthologies. Her research interests include Dickinson’s
transatlantic influences and literary allusion, especially relating to
British and Continental writers.
Eliza Richards is Associate Professor in the Department of English
and Comparative Literature at the University of North Carolina at
Chapel Hill. She is the author of Gender and the Poetics of Reception
in Poe’s Circle (2004) and is completing a book entitled Correspondent
Lines: Poetry and Journalism in the US Civil War.
Sandra Runzo is Associate Professor of English at Denison University.
She has published several essays on Emily Dickinson and is currently at
work on a book-length study of Dickinson and popular culture.
Emily Seelbinder is a Professor of English at Queens University of
Charlotte, where she joined the faculty in 1989. She is also the editor of “My Criterion for Tune,” an occasional series in the Emily
Dickinson International Society Bulletin that explores musical settings of
Dickinson’s work.
Sabine Sielke is Chair of North American Literature and Culture
and Director of the North American Studies Program and the
German-Canadian Centre at the University of Bonn. She is the author
of Reading Rape: The Rhetoric of Sexual Violence in American Literature
and Culture, 1790–1990 (2002) and Fashioning the Female Subject: The
Intertextual Networking of Dickinson, Moore, and Rich (1997). She also
coedited Orient and Orientalisms in US-American Poetry and Poetics
(2009).
Martha Nell Smith is Professor of English and Distinguished
Scholar-Teacher at the University of Maryland. She is the author or
editor of five books on Emily Dickinson, as well as a digital scholarly
edition, Emily Dickinson’s Correspondences (2008) and the Dickinson
Electronic Archives. She is on the Advisory Board of Harvard University
Press’s Emily Dickinson Archive (2013).
Alexandra Socarides is Assistant Professor of English at the
University of Missouri. She is the author of Dickinson Unbound: Paper,
Process, Poetics (2012).
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Contributors
xiii
Angela Sorby is the author of the critical study Schoolroom Poets
(2005); two poetry collections, Distance Learning (1998) and Bird Skin
Coat (2009); and a forthcoming anthology of nineteenth-century children’s poetry, Over the River and Through the Woods, coedited with
Karen Kilcup. She teaches literature and creative writing at Marquette
University.
Shira Wolosky is Professor of English and American Literature at the
Hebrew University of Jerusalem. She is author of Emily Dickinson: A
Voice of War (1984), Language Mysticism (1995), The Art of Poetry (2001),
Poetry and Public Discourse (2010), and other books and articles on literature and literary theory.
Magdalena Zapedowska is a former faculty member at Adam
Mickiewicz University in Poznan, Poland; she now works at the Writing
Center at Amherst College. Her articles on Dickinson and other
nineteenth-century authors have appeared in U.S. and Polish journals
and essay collections.
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Acknowledgments
I thank Ray Ryan for commissioning this book; the anonymous reviewers
of the proposal, who offered strengthening suggestions; and the staff at
Cambridge University Press and Newgen Knowledge Works for seeing
the manuscript through the publication process: Bindu has been particularly helpful. Elisa Faison helped build the index with care, and I greatly
appreciate the time and effort she devoted to this challenge. It has been
inspiring to work with the passionate and knowledgeable community of
Dickinson scholars. I would like to express particular gratitude for the generous help of those with whom I consulted most closely during the editing process: Jed Deppman, Jane Eberwein, Cristanne Miller, Domhnall
Mitchell, Marianne Noble, and Martha Nell Smith. Cristanne Miller and
Domhnall Mitchell reviewed my chronology and offered useful suggestions and corrections (any remaining errors are my own). Thanks also go
to the staff at the National Humanities Center, where I was a Fellow in
2010–2011 and a Resident Associate during the fall semester of 2011 while
working on this project. Karen Dandurand, a distinguished Dickinson
scholar, died before she completed her contribution for this volume. Her
influence and memory inform the work in countless ways.
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Abbreviations and Textual Note
Capps
EDJ
F
Habegger
Handbook
J
L
Leyda
Reception
Sewall
Whicher
Capps, Jack, Emily Dickinson’s Reading, 1836–1886
(Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1966).
The Emily Dickinson Journal (Johns Hopkins University
Press).
Franklin, R.W., ed., The Poems of Emily Dickinson: Variorum
Edition. (Cambridge, MA: The Belknap Press of Harvard
University Press, 1998).
Habegger, Alfred, My Wars Are Laid Away in Books: The Life
of Emily Dickinson (New York: Random House, 2001).
Grabher, Gudrun, Roland Hagenbüchle, and Cristanne
Miller, eds., The Emily Dickinson Handbook (Amherst:
University of Massachusetts Press, 1998).
Johnson, Thomas H., ed., The Poems of Emily Dickinson,
Including Variant Readings Critically Compared with All
Known Manuscripts (Cambridge, MA: The Belknap Press of
Harvard University Press, 1955).
Johnson, Thomas H. and Theodora Ward, eds., The Letters
of Emily Dickinson. (Cambridge, MA: The Belknap Press of
Harvard University Press, 1958).
Leyda, Jay, The Years and Hours of Emily Dickinson, 2 vols.
(New Haven: Yale University Press, 1960).
Buckingham, Willis J., Emily Dickinson’s Reception in the
1890s: A Documentary History (Pittsburgh: University of
Pittsburgh Press, 1989).
Sewall, Richard, The Life of Emily Dickinson (Cambridge,
MA: Harvard University Press, 1980 [1974]).
Whicher, George Frisbee, This Was a Poet: A Critical
Biography of Emily Dickinson (New York and London:
Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1939).
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xviii
Abbreviations and textual note
Unless otherwise indicated, quotations from Dickinson’s poems follow
the text of Franklin’s variorum edition; both Franklin and Johnson numbers are cited parenthetically within the text for the convenience of readers.
When the particular version of a poem is important to the essay’s argument, the letter has been added in addition to the number. Dickinson’s
letters are cited by Johnson’s letter numbers. Dickinson’s idiosyncratic
spelling, capitalization, and punctuation have been retained throughout,
and her dashes are represented by spaced hyphens, as in Franklin’s edition.
Some contributors have chosen to represent line breaks as they appear in
Dickinson’s manuscripts, though neither Johnson nor Franklin editions
represent them in this way.
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Chronology
1828
1829
1830
1833
1835
1838
1840
1846–7
1847
1850
Dickinson’s parents, attorney Edward Dickinson of Amherst
and Emily Norcross of Monson, marry.
(William) Austin, Dickinson’s brother, is born in Amherst.
Edward buys one half of the brick Homestead on Main Street
that belongs to his father. Emily Elizabeth Dickinson is born
here on December 10.
Lavinia Norcross (Vinnie), Dickinson’s sister, is born.
Dickinson begins four years at Amherst Female Seminary.
Edward Dickinson is appointed treasurer of Amherst
College.
Edward Dickinson begins first term in the Massachusetts legislature. Samuel Fowler Dickinson, his father and a founder of
Amherst College, dies in Ohio.
Dickinson enters Amherst Academy, with Lavinia: “I have
four studies. They are Mental Philosophy, Geology, Latin,
and Botany. How large they sound, don’t they?” (L6).
The Dickinsons move to West Street (now North Pleasant
Street).
The only known daguerreotype of Dickinson was made by
William C. North in Amherst.
Dickinson graduates from Amherst Academy and enters
Mount Holyoke Female Seminary, where she completes a single year of studies: “I am now studying ‘Silliman’s Chemistry’
& Cutler’s Physiology, in both of which I am much interested”
(L20). There she refuses to confess faith publicly during a
period of evangelical Protestant religious revivalism.
The Amherst College Indicator publishes a valentine by
Dickinson, “Magnum bonum.” Dickinson continues to resist
religious conversion, even though many of her loved ones
convert: “I am standing alone in rebellion” (L35). During
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1852
1853
1855
1856
1857
1858
Chronology
Dickinson’s lifetime a handful of poems were published, always
anonymously, and some perhaps without her permission.
The Springfield Republican publishes Dickinson’s “Sic transit gloria mundi” (F2 J3) as “A Valentine.” Edward Dickinson
is elected to the US House of Representatives. Emily writes to
Susan Gilbert: “Why cant I be a Delegate to the great Whig
Convention?” (L94).
Austin enters Harvard Law School.
With Lavinia, Dickinson travels to Washington, DC, and spends
several weeks there in February and March. On the way home
they visit Philadelphia, where Dickinson meets the Reverend
Charles Wadsworth. In November, the Dickinsons move back to
the Homestead on Main Street. Emily and Lavinia never marry;
they live their adult lives with their parents in this house.
Austin marries Susan Huntington Gilbert. They move into a
house built for them next door to the Dickinson Homestead,
which they call The Evergreens, where they raise a family and
have an active social life. The relationship between Dickinson
and Susan is important: “Dear Sue - With the exception of
Shakespeare, you have told me of more knowledge than anyone
living - To say that sincerely is strange praise” (L757).
Ralph Waldo Emerson lectures in Amherst and is entertained at
The Evergreens: “It must have been as if he had come from where
dreams are born!” (Prose Fragment 10, in Letters).
Dickinson begins recording poems in hand-sewn booklets later
known as fascicles. The practice continues until 1864. After this,
she gathers some poems in loose anthologies called sets (in 1865,
and from 1871 until 1875, when she stops). “Nobody knows this
little Rose” (F11 J35) appears in the Springfield Republican as “To
Mrs. - - , with a Rose. [Surreptitiously communicated to The
Republican].” Circa 1858–1865: Dickinson’s poetic production
increases dramatically, reaching an estimated peak of 295 in 1863,
and more than 200 in 1862 and 1865. She becomes increasingly
reclusive, but maintains an extensive and engaged correspondence
with family and friends, many of whom are also prominent public figures (Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Samuel Bowles, Josiah
Gilbert Holland, Helen Hunt Jackson, Judge Otis P. Lord). The
“Master Letters,” drafts of love letters with an unknown recipient, are probably composed during this time (it is unknown if
the letters were sent).
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Chronology
1861
1862
1864
1865
1866
1869
1870
1871–2
xxi
US Civil War begins. “I taste a liquor never brewed - ”
(F207 J214) is published in the Republican under the title
“The May-Wine.” Elizabeth Barrett Browning dies: “Silver perished - with her Tongue - ” (F600 J312).
“Safe in their Alabaster Chambers - ” (F124 J216) is published in the Republican as “The Sleeping.” Dickinson
begins correspondence with Thomas Wentworth Higginson,
responding to his essay in the Atlantic Monthly that offers
advice to young writers: “Are you too deeply occupied to say
if my Verse is alive?” (L260). Higginson departs for South
Carolina as the Colonel of the first black Union army regiment. Amherst native Frazar Stearns is killed in action, “his
big heart shot away by a ‘minie ball’” (L255).
Dickinson suffers from eye problems and moves to
Cambridge, MA, for treatment, April–November: “yet I
work in my Prison, and make Guests for myself - ” (L290).
Austin is drafted to fight in the Civil War and pays for a substitute. “Flowers - Well - if anybody” (F95 J137) published by
Drum Beat, Springfield Republican, and Boston Post under the
title “Flowers”; “These are the days when Birds come back - ”
(F122 J130) published by Drum Beat, a Brooklyn paper raising
funds for the Union cause, under the title “October.” “Some
keep the Sabbath Going to Church - ” (F236 J324) published
in the Round Table under the title “My Sabbath.” “Blazing
in Gold and quenching in Purple” (F321 J228) published by
Drum Beat and the Springfield Republican under the title
“Sunset.” “Success is counted sweetest” (F112 J67) published
in the Brooklyn Daily Union.
Dickinson returns to Cambridge for eye treatment in April,
and stays another seven months. Vision improves.
“A narrow fellow in the grass” (F1096 J986) is published by
the Republican as “The Snake”; Dickinson tells Higginson:
“it was robbed of me - defeated too of the third line by the
punctuation” (L316).
Dickinson refuses Higginson’s invitation to come to Boston:
“I do not cross my Father’s ground to any House or town”
(L330).
Higginson visits Dickinson in Amherst.
George Eliot’s Middlemarch published: “‘What do I think of
Middlemarch? What do I think of glory - ” (L389).
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1873
1874
1875
1876
1877
1878
1880
1882
1883
1884
1886
Chronology
Higginson visits Dickinson again.
Edward Dickinson dies in Boston: “His Heart was pure and terrible and I think no other like it exists” (L418).
Emily Norcross Dickinson has a stroke and is paralyzed.
In a letter, well-known writer Helen Hunt Jackson rebukes
Dickinson for refusing to publish: “You are a great poet – and
it is a wrong to the day you live in, that you will not sing aloud”
(L444a).
Samuel Bowles visits Dickinson in Amherst: “You have the most
triumphant Face out of Paradise” (L489).
Helen Hunt Jackson visits Dickinson in Amherst. At her insistence, Dickinson allows “Success is counted sweetest” to be
published anonymously in A Masque of Poets. It is attributed to
Emerson. Around this time Dickinson begins writing to Judge
Otis P. Lord, a relationship that lasts to his death: “It is strange
that I miss you at night so much when I was never with you”
(L645). Most letters, like this one, survive only in draft form, or
as fair copies. It is unknown if they were sent.
Reverend Charles Wadsworth visits Dickinson in Amherst. Judge
Lord and nieces visit Amherst. Lord gives Dickinson Complete
Concordance to Shakespeare at Christmastime: “While Shakespeare
remains Literature is firm” (L368).
Dickinson’s mother dies after a long illness: “The dear Mother
that could not walk, has flown” (L779). Reverend Wadsworth
dies. Judge Lord visits Dickinson in Amherst.
Dickinson’s beloved nephew Thomas Gilbert (Gib) dies at age
eight; she writes to Susan, “I see him in the Star, and meet his
sweet velocity in everything that flies” (L868).
Judge Lord dies: “I work to drive the awe away, yet awe impels
the work” (L891).
Dickinson dies on May 15; her final letter to Louise and Frances
Norcross reads simply: “Little Cousins, Called back. Emily”
(L1046). Funeral takes place on May 19 in the Homestead library.
Higginson attends and reads Emily Brontë’s “No coward soul is
mine.” Susan Dickinson writes an obituary that appears in the
Republican. Soon afterward Lavinia discovers a trove of Dickinson
manuscripts in a wooden trunk – no one seems to have been
aware during her lifetime of how many poems she was writing
(more than 1,700 are extant, many in multiple versions) – and
decides to enlist help in publishing them.
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